Egypt, the West, and the Arab Spring

Description

Egypt is central to both the origins and the future evolution of what has come to be known as the ‘Arab Spring’. A variety of factors – its traditional role as a staunch ally of the West, its cultural and demographic weight in the Arab world, its importance as an actor in the Arab-Israeli dispute, and its status as the cradle of political Islam in the Middle East – combine to ensure that developments in Egypt have significant consequences for the region as a whole. Accordingly, the wave of popular protest against former President Husni Mubarak, and his eventual overthrow, produced shock-waves throughout the region. While three North African dictators have fallen victim to popular anger (Ben Ali, Mubarak, and Qaddafi), the overthrow of Mubarak was the most significant. Equally, the electoral success of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood serves as an important test-case, shedding light on whether an Islamist opposition party can be successfully integrated into the political process – a test-case which is being watched closely by Islamists throughout the Middle East and beyond. At the same time, the West’s response to these dramatic events has been uncertain and inconsistent, reflecting a wider ambivalence about the impact of the Arab Spring on Western policies and interests in the region. Indeed, Western policy-makers are finding themselves, to their discomfort, essentially onlookers as these events unfold – willing to provide political or economic assistance where needed, but unable to determine the outcome, in Egypt or elsewhere, of political struggles which have still to play themselves out.